Accounts of Theo Parrish gigs often begin with the enigmatic DJ clearing the floor. The jazz, Afrobeat, dub reggae, and soul records he is known to drop tend to startle festivalgoers and dabblers who have come to expect nothing but four-to-the-floor from a dance DJ. Read on, though, and it turns out that just about every Theo Parrish set ends with minds blown and booties shaken, those experimental jazz cuts moving feet as ably as acid house bangers. Once hooked, you may find yourself going out of your way to hear the man spin. It seems likely that Parrish would occupy the role of DJ’s DJ, a selector and mixer whose dedication to the art is matched by few, even if he had never put out a record. But Theo Parrish has put out some records. Since his first release on Kenny Dixon Jr.’s KDJ, Parrish’s own Sound Signature has become a buy-on-sight label for even the most discriminating DJs and fans. Keeping subtle, complex, emotional deep house on the map for the past two decades, he has developed his style while maintaining a singular aesthetic. LWE recently checked in with Theo Parrish, finding him as busy — and as brilliant — as ever.

You recently reached a potentially new audience with your LCD Soundsystem remix, a combination that not many people might have expected. How did that come about? Do you think the prevalence of disco and house-based sounds that labels like DFA have engendered is a positive development for the music?

Theo Parrish: They hit me up and their approach was attractive; they said pick anything you want and sent the full album in parts. I don’t really recognize any current production as genre specific, so I hear a head nod and a wink to disco in their sound, but it’s the ethic — the DIY ethic. That’s where the value is.

You clearly have one of the deepest record collections around. Where are your favorite places to buy records?

I know a lot of people with a whole lot more, but I buy anywhere and everywhere. Some spots, depending on what I find, are my favorite that day after being dry for weeks. Some are account drainers, meaning they are rarely dry. Favorite cities with lotsa diggin’ possibilities for what I like: Chicago, Detroit, Minnesota, Toronto, Kansas City, Cincinatti, Osaka, Tokyo, London, Manchester, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Berlin. Just google local stores in those cities and go get your knuckles dusty.

The records you became known for early on were often sample-based and tracky, while you’ve since then experimented with vocals, group improvisation, and other techniques. How has your musical style evolved, in terms of your approach to production and your understanding of your own work?

I get bored very easily. I relied heavily on samples simply for lack of equipment. As I acquired more equipment the creative possibilities grew. I was sampling less and learning to play, and started to get to know some talented live players (like Jerry the Cat, John Douglas, Duminie Deporres). I had to try to keep up with them in the studio — and prerecorded stuff doesn’t change on the fly, you have to program it to — so the idea of being in the moment and learning about the ever-elusive pocket came when I was working with The Rotating Assembly. Those rehearsals had a large impact. It galvanized the theory of dedicated practice to build skill. I then found it limiting to sample larger blocks of music, so individual sounds, little bits, became more of what I would use for my sound pallette, and then less and less. Then I would only sample myself, and get drums from multiple sources: records, keyboards, live kit. Then I got tired of sampling altogether. That went into playing everything realtime and recording it. That was a big step, and don’t really expect to master that, just only improve. It’s currently what I wrestle with now, along with incorporating the methods I have a moderate grasp of already.

Some of your most recent releases have been vocal tracks, from 2008′s Chemistry to the most recent records with Bill Beaver and Danny Banks, and your DJ sets always incorporate soul and disco songs. Do you write words as well as music? How do you collaborate with a vocalist or instrumentalist?

Depends on the vocalist. With Bill Beaver, he comes up with lyrics off of the top of his head. First take. You better catch that first one, too. With Danny Banks, he had a written song, and all I had to do with was work on his phrase spacing. He’s so skilled, he was running all these backgrounds. Some idiot put it out there that there was AutoTune involved: No! No bloodclaat AutoTune in my studio! Blasphemer! Listen to the damn song. Anyway. For Genevieve Maranttette, I wrote “You Forgot,” “Split me Open,” and for Karen Bosco I wrote “Melt.” Lakecia Hughes came off the top for “Summertime Is here.” Monica Blaire, as on “They Say” and “Second Chances,” hears the song, then writes, and an hour later it’s laid down — efficient. Alena Waters offers solid suggestions in arrangement that always make sense to follow, that provides places for her to sing around and with. Very intuitive. As for the instrumentalists I’ve been blessed to work with, particularly John and Duminie, I just tend to give them adjectives. I can trust their taste.

The Leron Carson release on Sound Signature, while widely loved, has been shrouded in mystery. Who is he, and where did the music come from?

Leron is a lifelong friend from Chicago. We came up in the same area. We started making songs at 14 or 15 years old, almost every weekend until I went away to college. The songs I released by him had been on a cassette he gave me and were done in those early years. He’s always been a sorely overlooked talent.

You’ve had a residency at London’s Plastic People, which has been under threat of closure. As the trend moves towards giant superclubs, where have you found that the best parties takes place, and what makes them special?

You can’t judge a party before you get there, so it’s quite random. So many factors affect any given night. The issue with superclubs is the lack of intimacy. Smaller venues solve that, but it’s difficult to find smaller venues with powerful systems. A small club with a powerful soundsystem is always a good foundation. You have the intimacy, and a good system allows a wider range of songs to be presented outside of their percieved setting. The people have a chance to experience a wider range of emotional connection or repulsion.

The Three Chairs compilation CD, Spectrum, gave a lot of listeners a chance to catch up some hard-to-find records. Will there be more releases from the group in the future?

We shall see…

What else can we expect from Sound Signature in 2010?

Sketches. Sketches is a concept I came up with for some unreleased material I mastered without the songs being complete with all the elements. It was an experiment to force myself to get back to some basic production ethics I wanted to reacquaint myself with. It will be available only in Detroit for festival time, and I am only doing 150 copies and four separate pieces of vinyl, each one with a differently painted jacket. The only songs that may reappear on later 12″s this year are “Something About Detroit,” “Thumpasaurus,” and “Kites On Pluto.” I’m playing them out now to see which ones need more or can be released as is. Coming soon is the Sound Signature Sounds Pt. 2 compilation CD including Sound Signatures titles only available on vinyl from the catalog, and Translations, a CD comp of remixes and edits that are no longer available or previously unreleased.

[Strut]

The Blank Generation sounds less like a collection of tracks than it does the words of a storyteller, an account of historical events related by someone who was there. The witness is producer Bob Blank, whose narration is captured by Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton. The DJ Historians, in their first collaborative release with Strut, have anthologized 13 tracks that Blank helped commit to tape between 1971 and 1985. The resulting album is both an essential document of cultural history and, as one of its tracks puts it, a better than good time.

The setting of the story told here is Manhattan, in a now difficult to imagine era before Mayor Giuliani had his way with Times Square. On the island’s Lower East Side, a (sub)cultural renaissance was in full swing, producing a cacophonous harmony of multifaceted origins and outcomes that left such a complex network of historical effects in its wake it becomes difficult to keep track. The scene is chronicled in Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Downtown 81, a work of documentary fiction that runs parallel to this album. Just as Basquiat is seen walking through alleyways, lofts, clubs, and studios seeking the essence of contemporary culture, Bob Blank can be heard traveling through musical forms, documenting a movement retroactively fragmented by historiographical error.

As the tale is most often told, disco, post-punk rock, and jazz were not just separate genres, but sworn enemies. Though DJ mixes by the likes of Larry Levan already offer evidence to the contrary, this anthology proves that connections between the era’s musics were not only forged on dance floors — they originated in the records themselves. Few may have expected at the time that the figures who would most affect the shape of music to come were not flashy soloists or charismatic frontmen, but behind-the-scenes workers like Blank. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, the standard narrative insists. But as Marx pointed out, while history has to be lived forwards, it can only be understood backwards.

Viewed through the prism of the present, producers of Bob Blank’s generation reveal themselves as the architects of a musical landscape that has engendered both celebrity craftsmen like Timbaland and reclusive artists like Burial. Appropriately, Blank is most closely associated with disco; his work on Jimmy Sabater’s kitschy 1975 “To Be With You” made him responsible for one of NYC’s first disco 12-inches. There is disco to spare on this compilation, including Debby Blackwell’s euphoric “Once You Got Me Going,” Mikki’s hard-edged “Itching For Love,” and soul legend Gladys Knight’s aforementioned unofficial title track “It’s A Better Than Good Time.” With the latter two featuring John Morales and Walter Gibbons on remixing duties, respectively, Blank’s classic disco credentials are undeniable.

Yet he appears at the margins of the genre as well, with equally remarkable results. Patrick Adams’ Bumblebee Unlimited project, which has an unpredictability that transcends its gimmicky nature, is present with the percussive “I Got A Big Bee.” Like all the Bumblebee tracks, the entomological imagery both generates the entirety of the song’s lyrical content and defies any meaningful interpretation. Driven by another strange allegory, Leroy Burgess’ arrangement of Fonda Rae’s herky-jerky “Over Like A Fat Rat” makes it easy to dance to this. You can detect the bass line that would later form the foundation of Eric B. and Rakim’s seminal debut single, “Eric B. Is President.” “Music Trance,” by Charanga ’76 — named for a style of Cuban dance music — combines a quintessential disco flow with lyrics en español and Latin-inflected piano and brass arpeggios.

One of Blank’s most celebrated affiliations in the disco/not-disco continuum is with the legendary Arthur Russell, who is present on the mesmerizing “Wax The Van” — credited to Lola, the vocalist on Russell’s most famous disco cuts and Blank’s then-wife — and the charming “State of the Art,” by Russell’s rarely-heard new wave group The Necessaries. But the sweep of this album doesn’t end with a disco practitioner’s rock experimentation. Milton Hamilton’s groovy “Crystalized” is an irresistible facsimile of late-sixties psychedelic pop, while the disorienting “Emile” — by Blank’s own project, The Aural Exciters — combines lap steel guitar, vibraphone, and ominous moans, anticipating the nebulous approach to music sometimes referred to as “post-rock.”

The sensibility that informs work like this clearly comes from a perceptive listener, and Blank’s knowledge of the ancestral origins of contemporary music is represented here as well. As an engineer on Sun Ra’s Lanquidity — one of the finest albums of jazz’s fusion era — Blank recorded “When Pathways Meet,” which sounds like a Fletcher Henderson arrangement of a folk song from Saturn. James Blood Ulmer, a disciple of Ornette Coleman’s harmolodic school of improvisation, offers the inarguable “Jazz Is The Teacher, Funk Is The Preacher,” substituting a steel resonator guitar for a mirrored ball and redirecting the Mississippi Delta into the discotheques of the Lower East Side. “A Cruise To The Moon,” from no wave goddess Lydia Lunch’s album Queen Of Siam, is the inverse of those recordings, finding a group of young punks adopting the mannerisms of a jazz band. The dissonant, but swinging, horn riffs form a sonic Ludlow Street for celebrated punk instrumentalist Robert Quine to pace across.

The guitarist’s appearance on this collection presents a direct link to the album from which Brewster and Broughton presumably borrowed The Blank Generation‘s title: Richard Hell and the Voidoid’s landmark debut, the first recorded showcase for Quine’s twisted solo work. For Hell, the title was a declaration of a sociocultural void — his generation could not adopt the facile assumptions of the Sixties counterculture, and punk rhetoric took rock and roll to an extreme that turned it into its own negation. Fittingly, this compilation is a perfect complement to Hell’s manifesto. After the cleaning of the cultural slate with the nihilism of punk, a reconstruction became possible, enabling a vision of utopian plurality and hybridity that the music to follow has been trying to catch up to ever since. Take it or leave it.

By now, any techno head should know that Anthony “Shake” Shakir was one of the music’s creators. It’s hard to resist mentioning that he had a track on that first Detroit techno compilation, that he put out a record on Metroplex, and so on. But the recent Frictionalism compilation on Rush Hour demonstrates that his significance doesn’t stop there. While Shake’s profile may not have blown up like some of his neighbors, his recorded output has arguably been more consistent than any other techno producer. Remarkably, his approach to production remains as singularly brilliant as ever — edges have not dulled, colors have not faded. Shake is one Detroit techno legend whose entry in the history books cannot yet be written; too much lies ahead. For instance, catch him DJing at the Bunker on February 12, as part of New York’s Unsound Festival, along with DJ Qu, Petre Inspirescu, Eric Cloutier, and schoolmate Mike Huckaby. Those unable to attend need not worry — LWE’s 42d Podcast is an exclusive mix straight from Shake’s decks. The urbane Mr. Shakir also took the time for an expansive discussion with LWE, on subjects ranging from Motown, to MIDI, to Mel Brooks.

LWE Podcast 42: Anthony “Shake” Shakir (44:59)

Tracklist:

01. Patrice Scott, “Do You Feel Me” [Sistrum Recordings]
02. Norm Talley, “The Journey” [Third Ear Recordings]
03. Marcello Napaloteno, “Amici” [Mathematics Recordings]
04. Mike Huckaby, “Jupiter” [S Y N T H]
05. Scott Grooves, “Only 500″ [Natural Midi]
06. Disco Nihilist, “B2″ [Love What You Feel]
07. Confetti Bomb, “Fladdermus” [Autoreply Music]
08. Billie Jewell & Peven Everett, “All The Time” [Trippin Records]
09. A Made Up Sound, “Disconnect” [Clone Basement Series]
10. Jolka, “Dreamful” [Sect Records]
11. Jeff Mills, “Rich” [Axis]
12. Wax, “No. 10001-A1″ [Wax]
13. Unknown artist, “Untitled” [white]

Have your friends always called you Shake, or do you just use that for your music?

Anthony “Shake” Shakir: Oh, I got a line for this. My name is Anthony Shakir, but my mother calls me Tony. She tries to call me Shake but I don’t like her to do that. I got the name Shake because in 1978, as a black Nation of Islam Muslim, Wallace Muhammad, Elijah Muhammad’s son, who had taken over holding the reins of the Nation of Islam, said that all Nation of Islam Muslims should get rid of their slave names to get closer to who they are. We don’t know who we are as blacks in America, that’s a longer story. So my parents chose the name Shakir. I remember that because I was in fifth grade, and I was ten years old. I didn’t like the name when I got it, but I was like, alright, whatever. I didn’t like it till girls started telling me, oh that sounds like a pretty name, I’m gonna name my baby Shakir. So then I was like, it must not be that bad. But kids couldn’t pronounce it. They’d be like, hey Shaky! Hey Shocker! So they started calling me Shake. It became a shield for me, like I had a different personality. Like in The Beatles’ “Hard Day’s Night” movie, there’s a character named Shake. There’s a joke in “History of the World Part 1,” the Mel Brooks movie, where Harvey Korman says, “Wait for the shake!” So after a while it stuck.

So the Frictionalism retrospective set just came out. What made that project happen?

I’d been wanting to put out an album. Kenny Larkin put out a record for R&S in the early nineties. I saw this album, and I’m thinking like, wow, we can actually make albums with this music. I was trying to make 12-inches, because at that time I still didn’t even own equipment to make music. So I’ve always wanted to do an album. But this, for lack of a better term, was a “retrospective.” I’d rather call it a retrospective than “best of,” because that’s like, it’s already done, that’s it. All those records on there, with the exception of two or three came out on Frictional, which started as an idea in 1992. I started putting records out in ’94. I finally got confidence in what I was doing by about ’97.

As for Frictionalism as a title, I remember a jazz album, by a great saxophone player named David “Fathead” Newman called Newmanism. So I thought, I’m gonna call it Frictionalism — like it’s a cult or something, or just an idea. Even before I hooked up with Rush Hour, my whole thing was trying to get an album out in Europe, so it could bounce back over here. But what happened in the process of me doing it that way with Rush Hour was that the market for that stuff over here really died.

Does it bug you that there’s a market for what you do overseas, but not as much here?

Nope. I’m glad it’s like that. I’m glad they don’t like it here. The thing about techno music in Detroit, Detroit gets the credit for inventing it, which we didn’t do. I would say Kraftwerk kind of invented it as a pop music form. All we did was put a black face on it. That’s part of what enables it to still thrive to this day.

What did Detroit add to it?

I know what I did to it. I applied a hip-hop approach to the music. So technically if you take Kraftwerk as a basis, look at Afrika Bambaataa and Soul Sonic Force with “Planet Rock,” which took two of their songs and combined for that electro record. But I applied that rap musical idea to techno music. I think that’s what helped me set myself apart from everybody else I was working with.

One of the most original things about your body of work, which really stands out on the Frictionalism set, is how diverse it is. You’ve got a lot of different styles, different speeds.

That’s funny. Dan Bell would always say, your records be jumping all over the place! It’s not one specific sound or style. I told him, man that’s how I listen to music. I never liked to listen to one particular thing.

What do you listen to besides house and techno?

Jazz music. Soul music, definitely. Motown, definitely. Cartoon music, definitely. Movies. People.

Being someone whose music is so diverse, do you keep up with all the subgenres dance music has split into?

I listen to all of it — and if it’s funky, I’ll play it in my set. I like dubstep. I liked drum and bass, the Reinforced crew and all of them. I liked them, they liked us. I like anything that’s got a groove to it. I like a good song here and there. I like Johnny Cash! He’s a country guy, but country was too small a label to stick on him. His music was beyond that.

So as someone who likes a good pop song, do you hear the influence of Detroit techno on pop music?

The closest I can say to that is Radiohead’s Kid A album. They deliberately took an electronic approach. I think that was more based on what was happening in England, but at the same time, what was happening in England was based on the kind of stuff we were doing already. I look at it like, everybody uses machines to make records. So it’s all techno to me!

What machines do you use to make your own records?

I used to say, every record that’s ever been recorded is part of my music. Because I’m a sample guy. Any record that’s been put out, I can find a way to make it sound like me. That’s the beauty of MIDI instrumentation. If it wasn’t for MIDI, I don’t know if I could do music, because I didn’t have the patience to practice acoustic instruments when I had them around. So because of MIDI, you can cut and paste, copy, start over, you got everything you need.

What kind of stuff do you sample? Anything that would surprise us?

For “Fact of the Matter” that came out on Seventh City, on the EP Tracks for My Father, I sampled the drums from Tyree Cooper’s “I Fear the Night.” I remember when that record came out — it was a funny record to me, but I liked it. That’s when the Chicago thing was happening, it was ’85 or ’86. These kids, they couldn’t sing. They just wanted to make records! So the girl who’s singing on the record, she can’t really sing, but you can’t tell that she can’t sing, ’cause she’s singing! It worked. The thing I liked about the track was it had a nice pop to it. A snap. When I sampled it, I put it together like a hip-hop record. Not at a hip-hop tempo, but at a club tempo. For the next Frictional record that’s coming out, I sample “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” the Sergio Leone movie. When you hear it, you might be able to pick up on it or you might not. That’s my next record that’s coming out.

So you’re playing in New York in February, at the Bunker for the Unsound Festival. Do you play out much?

I’ve been playing out recently, since last November. I played out a few times earlier last year, but my main thing was, I didn’t want to play out unless I had something new out. Now I’ve got this compilation album and this 12-inch, and I can get back to work.

Moritz Von Oswald is simultaneously one of the most influential and enigmatic figures in techno. As part of Basic Channel, Maurizio, Rhythm and Sound, and other configurations with Mark Ernestus and a revolving cast of musicians and vocalists, Von Oswald became one of Europe’s first techno innovators. Basic Channel defined dance minimalism early on, both through a love of repetition as a form of change, and a willingness to let the music speak for itself. More recently, Von Oswald has demonstrated that his reach extends far past the dub-inflected electronic soundscapes he helped introduce to dance music, with stunning remixes of not just Tony Allen, but also Ravel and Mussorgsky. Finally, last year’s Vertical Ascent matched Von Oswald with Sasu Ripatti (Vladislav Delay, Luomo) and Max Loderbauer (nsi, Sun Electric) in an improvisational group, yielding a standout release of 2009 by any measure. LWE had the distinct privilege of speaking with Moritz Von Oswald in advance of his trio’s American debut at New York’s Unsound Festival. Like his music itself, Von Oswald’s approach to thinking about music is simple and direct. But like his music, depth and complexity are immediately apparent.

How did you get the idea to start an improvisational group, and how did you get connected with your collaborators Max Loderbauer and Sasu Ripatti?

I knew Sasu for a long time, because he did a record on one of our labels, Chain Reaction. So I’ve known him for 10 years or so. And I also knew that he’s interested in jamming, and I wanted to have a group that plays without any rehearsals, very simple. That just goes into recording without knowing each other too well. So very advanced improvisation was one of the key points. Making strong sounds and live playing, keeping it simple. As simple as I could. I’ve known Max for maybe 20 years, because when he came to Berlin we did a little collaboration on some — I wouldn’t say major stuff, but some small work. If you have a group with not too many members, you have to have trust in their facilities. And that’s what I had from those days. I knew that Sasu has a very great knowledge of sound and playing, and that’s exactly how it came out. With Max, I knew he has a very good sense of melody, and very, um — cute sounds, you know? This is what always attracted me to his productions. What he was doing was always very sweet-minded. And I liked that. If you listen to the record, you notice there’s a heavy dance rhythm. So Max breaks this up. It doesn’t affect the richness of the whole thing. It’s actually the opposite. It adds another layer to it.

A fully improvisational group in electronic music is pretty rare. Were there any groups, electronic or not, that you wanted to use as a model?

Not so much. I just wanted to have live playing, simple and spontaneous, with trust in the facilities of the other members, to develop a strong collaboration.

Have you done any projects like this in the past?

Not really, it’s the first time I tried this out. It came out because I worked in the studio for such a long time, which can sometimes be the opposite of this. Not so spontaneous. I like that, I like to focus on details. But I also like to just play! I mean, this is quite detailed. The record is very detailed in its sound picture. But it’s not overproduced.

The Moritz Von Oswald Trio in action. Photo by Rene Passet

How does the typical session proceed? Does everyone have a particular compositional role?

We get together and just play. We record from the first note.

So everything is new? Nothing is pre-written?

Nothing.

So how do you prevent things from going wrong, so to speak?

There is nothing wrong! I like the leftovers. I like when something is not precise, not just in “the right place.” I left everything we did and tried to work with it. Because nowadays you have all these precise records, and everything is in the right place because you can have access to it so much. I try to avoid this. And I think it worked, you know? With live playing, it’s a chance to try out stuff that you would never have imagined is possible.

So when people attend the Trio’s upcoming American debut performance in New York, are they going to hear something entirely different from the record?

Not entirely, but quite different. It will be improvised and very spontaneous.

What instruments will you use live? What’s your gear setup?

It’s just keyboards and percussion. We’ll also have a guest: Carl Craig from Detroit. Same thing — no rehearsal, just respect and trust.

Allow us to introduce ourselves: (left to right) Max Loderbauer, Moritz Von Oswald, Sasu Ripatti

You have another group with Carl Craig as well, along with Francesco Tristano, called Shape.

We formed last year.

What’s the approach to that? Is it a similar method?

Not really, because Francesco is a very well-trained pianist. It’s more like a club beat, very clubby. But also improvised, with some sax players and some different musicians. It’s quite different. We have a performance in London on the 12th of February. It’s gonna come out beautiful, I think.

It sounds like you’re moving in a lot of different directions with your current work, getting away from the conventional style of techno and approach to techno. Do you mostly listen to music outside of techno these days?

Yeah, I do. I listen to jazz, to classical, to experimental and avant-garde. A lot of dub as well. I just have fun with some sounds. Not too many concepts, just fun.

Will you continue producing club records?

Yeah! I’m doing remixes; these are going to come out as well. ReComposed is a very good example of how house can work with electronics from a different source. That’s why I like the record a lot. It broadens the mind, or at least I think it should.

It’s clear from your collaboration with the members of your group that you keep up with contemporary producers in dance music, in electronic music. Are there any other producers or DJs you’ve been listening to currently?

DJs, not so much. But I like what Carl is doing all the time. So we might work for together for some more projects. I don’t know, we’ll see.

Would you like to have more DJ gigs, playing techno?

Yeah, why not? No problem. I like club stuff.

Have you been doing much of that?

Not so much.

Did you get bored with it, or have you just been busy?

It’s just a question of having time. Time is short. That’s the main reason I don’t have so many releases for the club. But they will soon come.

Yeah? Do you have any upcoming projects you can tell us about?

I can’t tell.

[Sound Signature]

Though “Red Lightbulb Theory” has been charted by, among others, Lawrence and Tama Sumo, and comes “highly recommended” at nearly every vinyl outlet, one wonders if anyone besides Theo Parrish, whose Sound Signature label put the record out, and Omar-S, who is credited with engineering and editing work, knows just who the hell Leron Carson is. Dude has the sparsest Discogs entry I’ve ever seen, with only one previous release listed: the B-side of SS012, “The 1987 EP,” which featured his (almost literally) hypnotic “China Trax” along with Parrish’s “Insane Asylum.” Apparently, the five tracks on this two-record set come from the same sessions as “China Trax” — recorded when Carson was fifteen years old. In Parrish’s own words, this music was “hand made, meaning no sequencing was used for the keys on any of the songs featured, using cassette tape overdubs — a lost science.”

“Lost science,” indeed. This release feels like an artifact of ancient technology, one of those primitive contraptions in sci-fi movies that does things none of the modern scientists can figure out. Appropriately, the fidelity on the record is marred by tape hiss and distortion; whether this sounds thrillingly raw or unacceptably amateur depends on the listener’s sympathies and the context (a Theo Parrish DJ set comes to mind). As for the music itself, produced by this precocious teenager during the later years of Chicago house’s golden age, it may surprise you. While the scene’s music was at its maximum pH level, a year after Phuture’s debut, Carson’s sound was an almost polar opposite of acid’s aggressive squelch. This EP’s A1 track, “Mechanism,” opens the record by epitomizing its aesthetic principles: minimalism, dissonance, and textural complexity. Its almost unchanging bass line — an occasional key modulation keeps it from crossing the line of boredom — lays the groundwork for a meticulous exploration of the rhythmic potentialities of house’s eternal 4/4.

“The Unknown,” a high-speed, atonal banger, is hard enough to demonstrate that Detroit’s influence on Chicago in the late 80′s had become just as profound as its inverse. “Dedicated” is a more subtle take on the same vibe, with a boogie-funk drum roll tempering its attack. It seems at first to take a page from Kenny Dixon’s playbook with the gratuitous crowd noise, but close listening reveals this is the sound of Martin Luther King Jr.’s introduction at the 1964 March On Washington. With all the controversy today over politically-charged deep house voiceovers, “Dedication” offers a compelling historical precedent. “China II” is, appropriately, a reprise of “China Trax,” with its melodically and tonally modulating melody reminiscent of Steve Poindexter’s “Computer Madness.” The title track closes out the set with its most surprising, and most contemporary cut. “Red Lightbulb” matches a floating pad to a dubby bass, with the most melodic and rhythmic variation of any track on the record. It proves that this record is no museum piece. If used with care, its components sound as good today as anything that came out this year.

[N/A]

Rainer Trüby’s name (slightly misspelled) is the one on this record’s label, but he is not the only person responsible for the music in its grooves. There is a whole cast of characters to go through, but since Trüby is not exactly a household name himself, it might as well start with him. A key player in the nebulous “future jazz” sub-genre, Trüby titled his 2003 debut album Elevator Music, cheekily anticipating the criticisms most likely to be leveled at his smooth, mellow music. Danilo Plessow, better known by his production alias Motor City Drum Ensemble, is a collaborator on these two tracks. Equally crucial, however, are certain other collaborators unaware of their own involvement: Roy Ayers, Syreeta Wright, and Stevie Wonder. Ayers is mentioned by name on “Ayers Rock,” based on an uncredited track (tracks?) by the legendary soul-jazz vibraphonist. It is reminiscent of one of Plessow’s edits as MCDE: a chiming Rhodes, snatches of a soulful female vocal, and real hands really clapping. You’ve heard it all before, but you rarely hear it done this well.

“Ayers Rock” is a gratifying track, but its flip, “To Know You,” is beyond belief. To appreciate its achievement, consider the other two names cited above. Syreeta Wright is best known for a minor R&B hit in 1975, the inscrutably charming “Harmour Love,” penned by her then-husband Stevie Wonder. Film-goers became familiar with it in 2005 as the deceptively happy introduction to Phil Morrison’s unsettling cinematic exploration of white identity, Junebug. But there’s more to Syreeta Wright, who released two excellent LPs in the early seventies, featuring voluminous input from Wonder. Unfortunately, both are long out of print. One hopes that the master tapes — along with those of Eddie Kendricks’ People… Hold On, Wonder’s Where I’m Coming From, and other classic-but-unavailable soul albums — have been sitting on some record company shelf obscured from view by the Beatles tapes. Now that those relics are out of the way, maybe we’ll get the reissues we really need.

“To Know You Is To Love You” is a duet with Stevie Wonder from Syreeta’s 1972 self-titled debut. It is not quite the space-age R&B Wonder perfected on his own albums of that period, opting instead for a bluesy Stax-Volt vibe. Though the title, which is also the first line Wonder sings, sets the stage for a saccharine love song, things are not as they appear. “But to know me,” Stevie adds, “is not that way, you see.” Trüby and Plessow strip away nearly everything from the song except this ambivalent couplet. They restructure the harmony of its underlying keyboard vamp, turning the minor-key melodrama of the original lyric into a coldly detached statement of fact. It is impossible to discern an intention in Wonder’s voice. Is this a rejection, or a plea? Is it a tortured lament, or a cynical boast? There are no more words to say.

“To Know You” brings “To Know You Is To Love You” into the sonic future Stevie Wonder imagined in his classic work. Trüby and Plessow squirt Bootsy-esque bass all over the groove, drenching it to the bone in a funk you can smell. Square-tone riffs, shimmering 303 melodies, subtle string stabs, and percolating hi-hat variations make the track thrillingly unpredictable, suggesting intense emotions bubbling under the surface of its lyrical sentiment. For those who can’t look beneath that surface, this track might seem as stolid musically as Wonder’s voice seems emotionally. That old term “elevator music” might even come up. Is this record elevator music? Maybe it is. But need I remind you what comes out of elevators when the right people get stuck in them?

For many listeners, Fred P. was one of 2009′s major discoveries. Less a young upstart than a veteran finally getting his due, Fred Peterkin has become one of the key players in New York City’s resurgent house scene. His affiliations with Jus-Ed and Move D — both of whom are contributors to upcoming releases on Peterkin’s Soul People Music imprint — hint at his elegant deep house style, but his releases for the past two years as Black Jazz Consortium have established his unique voice. Fred took off from working on his ever-expanding label and his own productions not only for an in-depth discussion, but to provide us with our 29th podcast as well: an exclusive two hour journey through the deepest house — including some unreleased cuts.

LWE Podcast 29: Black Jazz Consortium (117:33)

Tracklist:

01. Patrice Scott, “Excursions (Reprise)” [Sistrum Recordings]
02. Leonid, “Never Mind, Use The Moon” [CDR]
03. Black Jazz Consortium, “Steps Beyond” [Soul People Music]
04. Ernie, “Soul Of The Night” (Ordell remix) [Minuendo Recordings]
05. Rick Wade, “The D” [Laid]
06. Imugem Orihasam, “Weather Report” [CDR]
07. Brawther, “Endless” (Deep Mix) [Balance Alliance]
08. Deymare, (unknown) [CDR]
09. Chaton & Ripperton, “+91 Ahead 2″ (Ripperton’s Los Barrios Mix)
[Plak Records]
10. DJ Spider & Lola, “Haarp Storm” (Spider’s Alternate Mix) [Plan B Recordings]
11. Substance, “Relish Loops 1-6″ [Chain Reaction]
12. Joey Anderson, “Untitled” [CDR]
13. DJ Qu, “The Zones” [Strength Music]
14. DJ Jus-Ed, “Getty Up” [CDR]
15. Levon Vincent, “The Medium Is the Message” [Novel Sound]
16. Damon Bell, “Banyana” [Deepblak]
17. Fred P., “Open” (Mars Mix) [Soul People Music]
18. Move D, “Drøne” [Modern Love]
19. DJ Jus-Ed, “Step Up 2″ [Underground Quality]
20. Black Jazz Consortium, “The Om” [Soul People Music]
21. Levon Vincent, “Invisible Bitch Slap” [Deconstruct Music]
22. George & Andre Hommen, “Marashi” [Objektivity]
23. Leonid, “Sadim” [Sistrum Recordings]
24. Sterac, “Rond” [Delsin Records]
25. DJ Qu, “Somethin’ Ta Feel” [Strength Music]
26. Fred P., Untitled [CDR]
27. Dub Poets, “Black + White” [white]
28. Hayden Andre presents Subculture, “The Voyage” [Strobe Records]

How was this mix recorded?

Fred P.: I woke up out of a deep sleep and started mixing out of a pile of records I’ve been playing out over the past few months. I used a Technics 1200 MK2, a Stanton S550 Dual CD Player, though only one player works, a Numark Pro CM-1000R Mixer Rotary, an old and beat down Pyle Pro PYX-3X Crossover, and a Roland VS840EX for effects only. Clips and blips are taken from the movies “The Secret” and “Beat Street.”

You’ve put out tracks under both your own name and as Black Jazz Consortium. Is there a difference?

Yeah, to a certain degree. The stuff I do as Black Jazz Consortium is a bit more consistent, as opposed to Fred P where I’m experimenting a little bit. If I’m compiling or something like that, outside of me being creative, I’ll probably just be Fred P. An exception would be the upcoming Earthtones collaboration on vinyl, which is myself, DJ Jus-Ed, and Move D. That’s probably the only compilation where I’ll be Black Jazz Consortium.

How do you approach a collaboration like that? How did it come together?

Well, I’ve been on Underground Quality on a few outings already, and I met Move D my first time in Germany. Basically, he knows my work and he likes my work, and I respect him a lot; I think he’s a great artist. The music I did with Move D I’ve had for a while, like a year. The original idea for the Earthones collaboration was to be a CD, but seeing what’s going on with technology now, what goes on with CDs when they come out, I feel it would be better to respect the work put into it musically by doing it on vinyl.

Do you stick to vinyl as a DJ?

Yes. I’d like to exclusively play with vinyl, though it’s kind of difficult. When I have some promotional stuff that’s on a CD, or something deep in my collection that’s on a CD, then whatever, but I like to play with vinyl. In a perfect world, it would be all vinyl.

Where did the name Black Jazz Consortium come from?

The name Black Jazz Consortium came from a project I did about 10 years ago. The original name of it was Brooklyn Jazz Consortium, because I was living in Brooklyn then — Bed-Stuy, to be exact. I told a good friend of mine by the name of Jay Locke about it and he was like, “Yeah, that’s a cool name,” but the project never went anywhere and it went into the closet for eons. 10 years later, I did a couple releases digitally, and I needed a name. I came across one of my CDs at the time that said Brooklyn Jazz Consortium, but I wasn’t living in Brooklyn anymore and it wouldn’t have made sense. So I just said, I need a quick name, and came up with Black Jazz Consortium. Slapped that on it, and off to the races. It seemed to catch on, and as time went by I started to define what that actually meant, and it took on a deeper meaning.

What is that deeper meaning?

I love jazz music, basically the idea of it, because it’s so closely related to dance music. If you really look at it through the history, jazz music at its inception was the dance music of its day. Now it’s really no different, it’s just electronic, and it’s more about artists themselves as opposed to a trio or quartet or whatever the case may be. But to me, it’s free-form music.

Name some jazz musicians who have inspired you.

Chick Corea, Groove Holmes, Oscar Peterson, Stanley Turrentine, Freddie Hubbard, Tom Scott — there’s a whole bunch of ‘em actually.

Do you have any experience playing jazz, or any other kind of musical training?

Nah, I play by ear. If the vibe is good, and I can feel it, I might be able to scratch out a little something. I’m not a traditional musician by any stretch of the imagination, so I couldn’t tell you a note if you asked me. I play both black and white keys though, it’s not like I only play black keys!

How did you first get into making tracks?

I started making tracks when I was like, 15 years old. What happened was, I was into hip-hop back then, beatboxing, cutting and scratching, breakdancing — you know, pseudo-b-boy stuff. Someone saw me rhyming with a friend from school and said, “Hey, I wanna make a demo.” I didn’t know the first thing about that, but I saw it as an opportunity. So I pretended I had some knowledge of what that was about. That was my first opportunity to see a studio, and once I got in the door, forget about it. It’s been on ever since. After that experience, I started to collect cassette decks, and tried to learn what multi-tracking was about. Even though the sound quality was terrible, it taught me the concept of sound design. Some of that stuff I still do in my tracks, with some of the weird noisier sounding things. “Levels” is a good example of that, you have the layered noises bouncing around within it as a rhythm. That’s a piece of that concept.

What inspired you to move from hip-hop to electronic music?

When I was in high school, I used to go to clubs to dance. I hung out in high school with a friend whose family members were actually in the scene and were able to get into clubs for free. It was always about dancing, I didn’t really have anything to do with collecting records or wanting to DJ. I just loved to dance to the music. That’s how I got into house. It was definitely about the vibe, the energy, the whole nine. I did that from about ’88 to about ’90 — three years’ worth of going to clubs and dancing, back before I even collected a record. Then when I stopped; I missed the music, so I would go to the record stores and buy the records.

So even though I got into hip-hop and was doing hip-hop production and all this stuff, behind the scenes I was still listening to house music. It never really left; it was what I would listen to when I didn’t want to hear anything else. It was always there, and when I got my first studio set up, the first tracks I produced were house tracks. No one ever heard them, but I produced them. They came to me easier than hip-hop at the time. I actually had to learn to put a hip-hop track together, whereas a house track kind of came easily to me. Not to say it’s easy to do, but the idea, the form, was a bit easier to wrap my mind around. To make a long story short, when I stopped doing hip-hop I stopped creating music altogether for about two years. When I got back into it again, my good friend Jay Locke inspired me to get back into making electronic music.

Who were the key dance artists for you when you started collecting records?

In the very beginning it was like Todd Terry, Masters At Work, anything that was on Strictly Rhythm, Nervous, Right Area — those were the main labels. That was in the early days. Fast forward, say to about 1999, 2000, it was basically Bugz in the Attic, 4Hero, IG Culture — the whole West London crew. They’re the ones who re-inspired me to really go hard and make some music, because they were using all the elements I liked from all electronic music, not just house or broken beat. They were utilizing everything and putting it into a danceable form, and that’s what made me really want to make music again. So I was collecting that stuff from about 1999 to about 2003, and then I switched. I started getting into deeper house, like real deep house, which is where the association with Underground Quality comes from, because Ed has been producing just some of the deepest stuff from then until now. He’s still bringing out some bangers — he’s the man for that! That’s really what I’m playing now, with little nuggets from other places, but it’s mainly Underground Quality, Strength Music, Novel Sound, Deconstruct. I mean, I’m not shirking anybody, that’s just what’s going on right now!

Has the scene in New York changed much since you got involved with it?

I have to be perfectly honest with you. I’m a bit of a hermit. I mean, when I used to go out way back in the day, the scene was different. New York was different. We didn’t have all the restrictions we’ve got now. Back in like, ’87, you could really party in New York from sunup to sundown and it really wouldn’t be any problem. Now the club scene is so constricted, it’s crazy. It’s difficult for underground guys to really get something started in the clubs because there’s so much on the back end you have to worry about, monetarily and logistically. So you don’t get to see much about that anymore. Especially since 9/11, it changed the scene a lot, because of the laws and all that different stuff.

Today, to be real with you, I only come out to parties where I know I’m going to hear what I like to hear. But now music is being presented in different forms. For instance, House-n-Home is done in a loft as opposed to a club, which is genius because it takes the club aesthetic out and leaves the house party in. That place is incredible and every party I’ve attended has been a stellar event. That’s my reason for going out. Otherwise I might step out here or there but I’m not really out in the scene like that because that energy I like about the scene isn’t really there. I mean, don’t get me wrong, everybody’s doing stuff. I could talk about it more on a musical tip than about the scene. Musically, there’s a definite shift going on because really, this kind of stuff might have been there but it hasn’t been put on the forefront. All credit goes to DJ Jus-Ed for putting it on the forefront. For instance, that Unity Kolabo Ed set up, if you listen to that, everyone on it is absolutely amazing! And I’m not saying that because I’m on it. I haven’t seen a record like that in years. Musically, there’s definitely a paradigm shift happening in dance music in New York.

Do you get to play in town much? Where do most of your gigs happen?

What’s funny is that my first major gig was overseas. I played at Hafen 2 in Offenbach and Cube in Heidelberg a year ago or so, and those were the first major clubs I’ve ever played in. I couldn’t get arrested here, actually. Then I went back for an Underground Quality night in Berlin with DJ Jus-Ed and DJ Qu, and then when I came home I started to get more gigs. So I was gigging about every month for like six months or so. Which was cool, because I wasn’t exactly used to it. I’m more of a production guy. Ninety percent of the time I’m in the studio, and it’s different world getting out and performing with records. I’m still actually getting a feel for it.

Is music a full-time thing for you?

Yes it is. It is doesn’t pay as much as commercial music, not remotely. It’s only because of the economy, I mean jobs are tight now. But I definitely need another hustle to go along with this, because I’m truly independent, man. I gotta work it for what I can.

Soul People Music has focused on putting out your own productions. Do you plan on adding other artists in the future?

Soul People in the very beginning was digital, and there was a whole roster. There were eight or nine releases. Then we lost our digital distribution, which happens if you don’t release something like, every week, to keep up with quotas. Then I started producing vinyl, which is a difficult medium to build on since the record stores started closing. So I’ve been putting all my effort into the Black Jazz Consortium project, to build it up so I can start presenting other artists on vinyl. That way it’s not so much a roll of the dice. I’m starting to do it with the Earthtones project. Maybe three or four records into that series I can start bringing out some artists who I already have on the roster who have gotten released digitally. You’ll start to see more artists digitally, but in the future you’ll see them on vinyl as well.

How has digital technology affected what you do, not only terms of distribution but production as well?

The only piece of computer software I use is Cubase, and I use it for recording purposes only. I’m old school when it comes to making music. I need the equipment right in front of me. I need knobs. I need to be able to turn things on and off with my fingers, instead of a mouse. I need to slide things. So I use a keyboard, I use a sampler, and I use a board to make my thing happen. Nothing against digital studios, at some point I will have to get with the technology of the day and try it out. But what I know is analog, and that’s how I get down. The only problem I have with digital music is that if you have a lot of artists using the same program, most of the time a lot of their music tends to have the same feeling. You get a lot of the same sounds, so they basically all sound like the same song! With time, you can freak anything and make it a little bit different, but for me, I live in an analog world. There’s more feeling to it, and you can hear everything, right or wrong. Whereas with digital, it’s so clean. There’s no room for anything else! That’s cool too, and I do have some of that music. I don’t hate on it at all. But I like the analog environment.

Does having those knobs and sliders affect how you produce tracks? How does your creative process work?

I don’t know, man. That’s a touchy subject! I don’t particularly have a theory for making music. Maybe that is my theory.

[Atavisme]

Pépé Bradock’s catalog falls into a few different modes. There’s elegant deep house (the famous “Deep Burnt,” the achingly beautiful “6 Million Pintades” EP, most recently “Mandragore”), hip-hop and electro-inflected grooves (several tracks from his early “Un Pepe En Or” EPs), and eccentric experiments (the fucked up “Rhapsody in Pain”). Though Bradock seems to have left overt hip-hop behind while maintaining the influence in subtler ways, deep house and experimental electronica are in full effect on his excellent new 12″, “Swimsuit Issue 1789.”

“Path of Most Resistance” starts out with a beat reminiscent of Lil Louis’ classic “Video Clash” before piano chords and Bradock’s trademark vocal cut-ups appear. The stomping rhythm blends synergistically with these poignant harmonies, while delicate melodic insinuations emerge; occasional reductions to just percussion are nearly shocking. “CU @ Minna & Lafayette,” though not quite as stunning, mines the same territory with remarkable results. The addictive bass line and jazzy chord progression here are amended with fluttering synths and string samples, filtered until their approach has visceral effects. Bradock’s methods have been refined over the years to a masterful, unified style, a synthesis of programming and sampling, achieving an idiosyncratic yet widely appealing result. Though the stuttering, collage aspect of his work can often make his tracks bear a similarity to micro-house, Bradock maintains a humanist impulse more in line with hip-hop producers like the late J Dilla.

“Unapologetic Weightlessness” closes out the record with an example of Bradock’s, well, unapologetic insistence on avant-garde experimentation. The track is a loping, beatless synth workout that seems drawn from the most outré jazz fusion. It’s unlikely to be on regular rotation at your local club, but it might blow some heads if used carefully. In a way, it is most representative of Bradock’s artistic mission: an uncompromisingly postmodern, plugged-in revision of soul music, equally representative of sonic traditions as it is of its creator’s passionate, slightly twisted genius.

“Intelligence” is not a word that comes up often in house music. In this context, it almost seems like a challenge; this record wasn’t titled for “Soul” or “Sex,” or any of the other social concepts excessively invoked in dance discourse. Though an intellectual emphasis is unusual, it shouldn’t be a surprise; this EP is the inaugural release for Laid, a vinyl-only subsidiary of Hamburg’s reliable Dial, and features music by lesser-known Detroit heavy Rick Wade. Founders Lawrence and Carsten Jost have made Dial’s name synonymous with a style of house that is both cerebral and emotional, without sacrificing its danceability. It’s a style, like much of today’s best house music, that is deeply indebted to Rick Wade. Though Wade arguably kicked off the contemporary deep house sound with 1994 releases on his own Harmonie Park label, you’ll have a hard time finding original pressings of his classic records, any of his mixes for download, or more than a couple interviews with him. Fortunately, Rush Hour, Funky Chocolate, and Wade’s own Harmonie Park have been steadily reissuing some of his best work, and Laid 001 should only confirm his presence in house music’s Dancehall of Fame with three typically soulful, sexy, and yes, intelligent tracks.

Wade often talks about his interest in anime, and is himself an animator working on his first feature. There is an appropriately cinematic feel to much of his work, with its dramatic, swooping strings and dynamic textural shifts. Consider the sci-fi narration by Morgan Freeman (from forgotten Spielberg vehicle War of the Worlds) on lead off track “Ricky’s Groove.” As he describes an alien civilization observing Earth, the haunting melody and soft shrieking noise effectively evoke an extraterrestrial atmosphere; imagine that green babe taking William Shatner by the hand and leading him to the hippest club in Alpha Centauri. However, anime and science fiction are not the only genres relevant to Wade’s music; the influence of 70′s blaxploitation is more than apparent. Though this seems to be one of the few Rick Wade records not to have a track with the word “pimp” in the title, “The D” more than makes up for it with its chiming Rhodes vamp, funky bass line, and forlorn trumpet riff. Like many of Wade’s best tracks, it would fit perfectly in a soundtrack for Shaft On Mars. The title track keeps the sci-funk vibe going, with a twisting chromatic chord progression and trippy effects that never obscure the propulsive beat. This is a record that lives up to its description, maintaining a standard that has characterized the output of both Rick Wade and Dial Records. These tracks will keep a dancer’s feet moving, but they’ll keep a listener’s synapses firing too.

Dance music has always had a DIY spirit that puts punk to shame. Not in a band? Just put on some records. Can’t play an instrument? Buy a sequencer. Can’t get signed? Start your own label. It is this mindset that brings us Disco Nihilist’s first release, in both literal and aesthetic terms. Label Love What You Feel is masterminded by Thomas Cox — proprietor of infinitestatemachine and frequent LWE commenter — who discovered the Austin, Texas producer’s work through Myspace. The process of putting out the record (no surprise, it’s vinyl only) has even been documented in a series of posts on ISM. The label seems to be aptly titled; this is not the work of professionals or insiders, but of dedicated fans.

It is not only the release of the record that bears the traces of that bricolage approach characteristic of early dance music. The press release proudly proclaims that Disco Nihilist not only produces his tracks on analog sequencers, he records them to cassette tape. It sounds like it. No movie-soundtrack pads here, no swooshing breakdowns, no Pro-Tooled diva vocals. If this record is out of touch with the present, it’s because it reclaims the music of the past’s insistence on sounding like the future. While overproduced dance music makes use of technology in a manner reminiscent of Transformers 2, Disco Nihilist’s work is more like Shane Carruth’s 2004 masterpiece Primer: low budget, low profile, and highly awesome.

These four untitled tracks are clearly made by someone who loves house music, has studied it closely, and has trimmed it down to essentials. Snare rolls and kick flutters on “A1″ weave through insistent chords and a funky 303, with deep, meditative results; “B2″ makes a similar formula dark and aggressive. “A2″ is a sparse workout for blips and beeps, while the dubby, spaced-out “B1″ milks an 808 cowbell for all it’s worth. Which is a hell of a lot, in case you were wondering. This record is an auspicious debut for both artist and label — hopefully the future brings not just more from them, but more like them as well.